


Nothing Was Beautiful and Everything Hurt

by A_Diamond



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angels are Dicks, Angst, Apocalypse, Dubious Consent, Hell, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Other, Past Character Death, Post-Hell, Post-Season/Series 03, Stockholm Syndrome, Supernatural Reverse Big Bang Challenge, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-21 01:55:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6033724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Diamond/pseuds/A_Diamond
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After an eternity encased in the ice of Hell, Dean Winchester is resurrected by an angel with one demand: accept his fate and serve as a vessel to avert the Apocalypse. Dean has reason to be wary, but Heaven will do anything to see their plans to fruition.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing Was Beautiful and Everything Hurt

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Arronaut](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arronaut/gifts).



> Written for the [2015 SPN Reverse Bang](spn-reversebang.livejournal.com). [Art](http://thearronaut.livejournal.com/798.html) by the wonderful Arronaut; thank you for the prompt and for being so excited about our project!
> 
> Thanks also to [Fic_me_senseless](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Fic_me_senseless) and [Zeryx](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Zeryx) for being excellent readers and betas.

Time passed in Hell, but encased in his solitary tomb of ice, Dean had neither method nor reason to mark its progress. His life—afterlife—existed in moments; he couldn’t always be certain of their order. Some were distinct _the first time he tried to scream, he discovered the ice was packed so tightly around him that he couldn’t open his jaw or tense his throat_ , some were ambiguous _he counted good nonexistent heartbeats until the numbers became meaningless, again and again and again_ , and all were steeped in the bitter cold of his surroundings _he had a brother who he left hurt and alone and_ ** _warm_**.

He tried, more than once, to calculate how high he’d need to count to pass the amount of time he’d lived _he’d heard a song once about how many minutes were in a year; it didn’t help with how many seconds were in twenty-nine_. He thought it must have been longer than that, but every now and then he wanted to know for sure. He couldn’t remember getting past six digits, or how many attempts he’d made, or what arbitrary number he’d decided to aim for _his brother would have been able to get the math right, would have remembered the song_.

When he had a thought to occupy him _he saved his brother and he couldn’t take it back, but he would if he could and he hated himself for it_ , he was better able to stand the frozen isolation; when he lost that thread of cohesion _please please oh God oh God oh God please_ , everything slowed and stretched to unbearable madness. Eventually his attention would snap back, first to his body, muscles seized and bones aching from the glacial embrace, then to the renewed inner voice narrating his consciousness.

At times, all he had were snatches of song lyrics repeating endless loops in his head when he couldn’t remember the rest of the song _twas in the darkest depths of Mordor I met a girl so fair_ ; at others, they brought back such vivid scenes that he almost—almost—forgot the chill sinking deep into his core _his mother sang Hey Jude and her voice was kind and her hair was soft and her hands were warm_.

Immeasurable and infinite, each epoch cracked through with shivers he couldn’t discharge and dread he couldn’t escape. He persisted because he had no power to cease.

Between one breath and the next, had he been able to breathe, the quality of the light he could always see filtering past the ice with his frozen-open eyes changed slightly, became brighter and more white than blue, and all of Dean’s thoughts halted the instant before everything went black.

Dean opened his eyes, then took a moment to process the fact that he could open his eyes. He could close them, too, and breathe deeply, and count the pulse of five heartbeats before his eyes snapped open again on the most important realization of all: he wasn’t cold. The air around him—and it was air—was still and balmy, neither dry nor humid, and it blanketed the bare skin of his face and hands in long-forgotten warmth.

The gentle atmosphere evoked flashes of memories: _a Fourth of July picnic spent on his father’s lap while his mother held the baby; stretched back over the trunk of the Impala next to his brother, sharing a beer and the view of a New Mexico sunset; braced on one arm above a temporary lover in a motel bed as stale summer air drifted across his skin;_ less real, more distant than those he’d lived in the ice.

“Dean Winchester.”

The voice cut through his reverie, rolling like thunder into ears unaccustomed to the sound, and forced his attention to the surroundings—finally, somehow, free from the glacial prison. He was in a room, small and dark: black and gray tiled floor, drab institutional walls, lit by a lamp so dim it barely reflected off of what had to be a one-way mirror _his shoulders slammed into the wall and he laughed at the futility of it_ , and a table with a full charcoal surface.

On the other side of the table stood a man, and it was only upon noting that that Dean realized he was sitting. He knew—thought—he hadn’t moved, so he must have appeared seated on the hard metal chair, wearing the clothes _giant claws shredded easily through canvas, raking gashes across white-turned-red cloth and flesh-turned-blood stomach_ that he’d died in.

The man wore a suit and tie, a trench coat, and a more intense expression on his face than Dean could ever recall seeing before. He couldn’t read the precise emotion behind the deeply furrowed brows and tightly pressed lips, but the man’s piercing blue eyes seemed to penetrate through Dean’s very soul.

After meeting the stare for what felt like several minutes, though Dean was sorely out of practice when it came to judging time, he decided that if the man wasn’t going to say anything, he should try. “What”—his voice sounded strange to his own ears, not any different than in his memories but still somehow marked with the time from its last use _he challenged her to drag him to Hell and she did, she did, she did_ —“What is this? Who are you?”

“This is an opportunity to atone for your sins,” the man answered with the gravity of the sacrosanct.

Dean had to swallow a few times. The first was to soothe a nervous and surprised throat; the second, third, and fourth were for the sake of the newly rediscovered sensation all on its own. He struggled to parse the pronouncement. “What does—how—what are you?” he finally managed.

The already dim lights began to gutter, and though the man had been standing rigidly straight to begin with, he nevertheless seemed to grow taller as reflections flickered in the mirror behind him. “I am an angel of the Lord,” he said as the flashes at his back erupted into a black silhouette of outstretched wings, “and you will serve Him.”

Since he had nothing to say to that, Dean only stared at the man—angel—in stunned silence. He was met with an inscrutable gaze and a lack of any further explanation as his mind reeled _angels were real, his parents were dead, he might get out of Hell, his brother was alone, angels were, angels_ and he tried to grasp any form of response he could. The best he could manage, soft and strangled, was: “How?”

“You have been chosen to do God’s work and rid the world of evil once and for all. It is a great honor.”

“And, uh, how exactly am I gonna do that?”

“You will say yes, Dean. All you need to do is say yes.”

This, at least—at last—was familiar territory. “I’m not just gonna go along with whatever... ineffable plan you’re not telling me. I may have a history of throwing away my soul on shitty deals, but I knew what I was getting myself into. Plus, the other guys sent me a hot chick to seal the tonsil-signing deal. No offense, dude, but I’m not really into the whole”—he gestured at the angel, waving his hand up and down—“look.”

A shard of chill spiked down Dean's spine, but he couldn’t tell if the temperature had actually lowered or the harsh look leveled at him had inspired instinctual fear. “There will be no ‘tonsil-signing,’” the angel informed him with a scowl. “All that is required is your consent.”

“Consent for what?” Dean demanded. “You haven’t told me what I’m supposed to be agreeing to, or what’s going on that you need me for, or even, like, your name. If things like you have names, or personalities—not looking promising on that score, by the way.”

Lightning cracked impossibly across the ceiling, a blinding web of branching menace, and Dean nearly toppled his chair as he flinched away. “You will show some respect,” the angel said, low and dangerous. “We raised you from perdition and we can easily cast you back.”

Dean fought to control the shiver that wanted to draw his arms and back protectively tense, but before he could react further, the angel’s head tilted slightly to one side and his eyes lost focus, drifting from Dean’s.

He stayed in this pose for long moments until his features softened into something more akin to contemplation than righteous fury. The air warmed a slight but noticeable fraction as he turned back to Dean and said, “I am permitted to explain the situation.”

“Okay.” Dean drew out the word hesitantly, surprised by the turnaround and unwilling to question the circumstances.

The angel stared intently at Dean, leaning forward to rest his weight dramatically on the edge of the table opposite Dean. “We are in a time of tribulation. The Apocalypse is upon us and Lucifer walks the Earth.”

“Lucifer? Like, the freaking devil Lucifer? Satan?”

“Yes. You understand why the need is dire. Do you agree to assist us?”

“Dude, you gotta give me more than three seconds to adjust to the end times. What happened?”

After another moment of odd attention to nothing, the angel related the story, his voice compelling but monotone despite the topic. Lucifer, he explained, had been cast out of Heaven millennia ago. The general outline was familiar, though details were not: he had been imprisoned in a cage in the deepest pit of Hell, buried far below the ice _couldn't blink couldn't breathe couldn’t scream_ at the center of the infernal realm.

For reasons the angel wouldn’t—couldn’t, Dean suspected—explain, there existed a means to let Lucifer back out of the cage. The rituals were complex, varied, and abhorrent, and though a handful of groups or individuals had attempted to complete them in the necessary order and under the right conditions, none had made it very far before the wrath of Heaven fell upon them to protect God’s creation.

For as long as Lucifer had been locked away, that had been enough. However, having taken Dean’s death extremely poorly, Sam Winchester—

“Sam? What the hell does Sam have to do with this?”

“Everything. He released Lucifer into the world.” The angel’s eyes were hard and focused, daring Dean to challenge him again. Naturally, Dean did.

“No fuckin’ way. You’ve got it wrong. We hunt monsters, not summon them. Sammy’d never do that.”

“He may not have been entirely aware of the consequences, but he chose to undertake unspeakable actions in pursuit of his goal. Raising Lucifer required a great deal of black magic and innocent bloodshed.”

“Why... What did he think he was doing?”

“He was told he could bring you back from Hell, and he was willing to do anything to accomplish that.”

“Told?” Dean echoed. “Some random jackass tricked my little brother into letting the devil loose, and he just believed them?”

The angel’s impassive face gave way briefly to a wrinkled grimace of distaste. “He was misled by the demon he chose to fornicate with. I believe you’re familiar with her.”

“Ruby?” _white eyes that were meant to be black in a pale face, smirking down at him_ “He’s fucking Ruby?”

“He was,” the angel confirmed. “Upon realizing her duplicity, he killed her. The damage was done, however, and Lucifer was freed from his confinement.”

When Dean had nothing further to interject, the angel went on to describe the effects of Lucifer’s rising: civil and international wars, global crop failures and droughts, rapidly spreading viruses with no apparent cure. The world’s population had nearly halved in a decade, and—

“Wait, hold on, just wait a minute,” Dean interrupted again. “How long has Lucifer been topside?”

“Twenty-four years.”

“Are you serious?” He gaped at the angel, who stared back at him. He certainly looked serious. “You let the devil run around for twenty-four years before you decided to get off your feathered asses to do something about it?”

With an expression that could have been boredom if it hadn’t been so emotionless, the angel let several beats of silence pass before apparently realizing that Dean expected an answer. “The issue is complex, you must understand. Lucifer was capable of influencing humanity and events on Earth, but his power has been fractional since he fell. He was not a threat to Heaven.”

"So fuck the humans, is that it?” Dean demanded, bitter but not surprised. Angels were real _they’re watching over you, she said_ but they clearly hadn’t cared about the world _he could still hear her screaming over the roar of flames, over his baby brother’s crying, over his panting breaths when he woke_ in a long time.

“The righteous who died have been rewarded with Paradise; they are better off. We had no reason to interfere so long as his treachery was confined to Earth. God’s children could be welcomed to Heaven as He always intended.”

Dean snorted. “Yeah, somehow I doubt most of them found that comforting while living through a quarter century of the worst shit ever.” Seeing the angel frown, clearly about to try and justify it with more propaganda about the wonders of being dead, he cut him off to ask, “So why do you care now?”

Not the least bit disconcerted by the accusations, the angel carried on with his story as though Dean hadn’t interrupted at all. Lucifer hadn’t been a problem as far as the angels were concerned, because he couldn’t gain access to Heaven in his nearly powerless state. In order to achieve that, he required access to a vessel.

“A human form to contain and focus his grace,” the angel explained. “Without a vessel, we are significantly weaker.”

“Like demons. You’re telling me you’re in a meatsuit right now, that’s some poor sucker’s body?”

The angel’s eyes narrowed and flashed dangerously, as they had before his display of power earlier, but the lights stayed steady and no wings came out. “Not like demons. We take our vessels only from the willing and the righteous. Jimmy Novak was a devout man and he is reaping his rewards in Heaven.”

“He’s—dead. Of course he’s dead, why should I be surprised that the guys who let Lucifer run around for almost a quarter of a century because he was only killing humans, kill their own ‘vessels,’ too. It must have taken a fucking miracle to get you to rescue me, given how you feel about us.”

The angel opened his mouth to respond, but Dean had finished following his thought to its conclusion and plowed on, “And about that. You left me in Hell for twenty-four goddamn years?” he yelled.

“No. It took Sam a year to successfully free Lucifer, so on Earth it has been twenty-five years since your death. Given the time differential in Hell, you would have experienced it as closer to three thousand.”

Dean couldn’t breathe. His chest was as cold and tight as it had been trapped in the ice, until his lungs began to burn to remind him of his renewed need for oxygen _the water was cold and the people on the dock were yelling and he couldn’t find the boy, he just had to find—_. “Three—three thousand. Years?”

“Yes.” Dean’s gaze fixed on the angel’s impassive face, but he wasn’t seeing Jimmy Novak’s features; he was lost in the _endless cold_ enormity of the revelation. He didn’t know how much time passed before the angel continued, as though it made it better, “You weren’t needed before Lucifer’s vessel consented. We lost many angels and vessels in your retrieval, as we knew we would. We could not risk it until it became a necessity.”

“Which it did,” Dean said for lack of anything else filtering through his numbness.

“Yes.”

“Because someone consented to Lucifer.”

“Yes.”

“Someone said yes to Satan wearing them like Buffalo Bill,” Dean went on, warming to the subject as an excellent distraction. “Who even does that?”

Nothing in the angel’s expression changed, but the quality of his stillness and silence shifted just enough for Dean’s suspicious nature to prickle his spine with a chill. “Who was Lucifer’s vessel?” he asked slowly.

The angel’s eyes tightened, creasing lines at the corners.

“Who,” Dean repeated in a voice he barely held steady, “was Lucifer’s vessel?”

“The vessel’s identity is immaterial to the fact that Lucifer now has the strength to lay siege to Heaven. The Host is holding him off even now, but we cannot do so indefinitely. If he is permitted to break through the gates, not only will all of God’s creation be in jeopardy, but the worthy souls resting eternally in paradise will be condemned to suffering.”

Dean let the angel go on with his appeal without stopping him, but when it was finished, all he asked was, “Who?”

Despite the stillness of the room they were enclosed in, the lack of even a sliver of space beneath the door, a chill draft swept across Dean’s shoulders as the angel met his gaze dispassionately. “You know the answer to that already, Dean.”

He did, but he refused to believe it. “I wanna see Sammy.”

“Your brother is dead, Dean. His soul is in Hell.”

“So go get him out!”

“No.”

“No. No? That’s it, just no? Why the fuck not? You got me!”

“At the cost of many of my brothers’ lives. You were necessary; he is not. We will not sacrifice any more of the Host, particularly for the sake of an abomination who has earned his torment.”

Dean shoved back the chair and leapt to his feet, fists clenched so hard they shook at his sides _tied to a chair in a decrepit sitting room, straining to free himself and hurt the people—people—threatening his brother_ as he roared, “You get him right the fuck now or I am never gonna say yes!”

Unmoved, the angel didn’t so much as blink at the threat. “You misunderstand, Dean. This is not a negotiation. You are in no position to make demands.”

“The hell I’m not.” Dean stalked around the table, right up into the angel’s space, and thrust a finger inches from his face. “I’ve got something you want. You’ve got the power to do something I want. Quid pro fucking quo. No Sammy, no cooperation.”

The fist came from out of nowhere, slamming into Dean’s jaw before he could even register that the angel had moved. He fell back and stumbled into the table so hard that it would have sent him sprawling had the angel’s other hand not grabbed him by the collar at that moment to hold him for another blow. He felt a shocking, painful crunch as it caught him hard across the cheek.

The angel allowed Dean’s legs to buckle with the third punch, dropping him to his knees. Pushing his back against the table’s edge so that his head fell back, the angel stared down at Dean with the same calmly assured affect.

As the moment stretched on, Dean probed the inside of his mouth a cautious tongue; his cheek stung and tasted of iron, but the teeth were unbroken. Licking the blood from his lips, he accused, “I thought you were supposed to be the good guys.”

The angel watched him for so long that Dean had given up hope for an answer before it finally came: “We are.”

The angel released him and he dropped forward, barely catching himself from cracking his face into the floor. Holding himself up on shaking arms, he looked up to see the angel back in place near the mirrored window, gaze steady and uncaring. 

When he pulled himself to his feet, leaning heavily on the table, he expected the angel to come at him again, or leave, or say something—to react in some way. Instead, he stayed unnaturally still as Dean staggered back to the small metal chair and sat heavily.

Keeping a wary eye on the angel, Dean tentatively checked the damage to his face. His cheek hurt like a bitch and poking it felt like stabbing himself in the eye, so something was probably broken there, but that was the worst of it.

The taste of blood in his mouth was familiar, almost soothing in a way that really ought to have disturbed him more than it did. But he understood. Plunged without warning into a world where angels and the devil were real, where Sammy was dead and damned, where he was somehow the key to averting the apocalypse—violence was physical and normal, and he could do something with that.

“I’m not saying yes,” he said through the renewed bite of pain puncturing his cheek and sparking down through his jaw.

“You will.”

Dean snorted in disbelief and instantly regretted it. He also regretted the subsequent wince. Ignoring how it ached to do so, he glared at the angel, who neither flinched nor apologized. “You’re a dick,” Dean told him, then continued scowling without response.

As the adrenaline wore down, he grew increasingly aware of the coolness of the room; nowhere close to the aching cold of the ice, but less warm than it had been. Or maybe that was shock setting in, but he didn’t think so.

“Look,” Dean said after what he thought _seven thousand three hundred and three, seven thousand three hundred and four_ was at least two more hours of nothing happening, “frowning at me isn’t gonna change my mind. Beating the crap out of me isn’t gonna change my mind. I know how this shtick works.

“Just put me in whatever cell you’ve got made up to match this, what has to be wildly out of date by now, interrogation room, and don’t bother me until someone more important than you agrees to get Sam out.”

“There is no cell, Dean. There is no possibility of another mission to Hell being approved for your brother’s soul. You will stay here in this room until you agree to play your part.”

Dean looked around skeptically. “I’m alive now, you know. I’m not a complete idiot, I’ve picked up on that. I’m gonna need to eat and sleep and shit, and you don’t really seem to be set up to accommodate that here.”

“When you help us, we will provide for you.”

“Not happening, buddy. And I bet you’ll give on that before I do, because I got this feeling that if I starve to death, I go back to Hell. Right?” The angel didn’t answer, which was answer enough. “And you can’t risk another trip down under to haul my ass out again, sounds like. So, can't let me die. That sounds like I win.”

When the angel answered, after a long enough pause that Dean heard his own pulse thrum faster with anxiety, his voice was again low and dangerous. “We do not have to let you die if we starve you. We can keep you alive, barely, hungry and dry and exhausted, covered in your own filth, until you break.”

The temperature plunged around him, more than could be accounted for by the flash frost of fear spreading down his back. He knew, as deep in his bones as Hell’s chill, that the angel could follow through on that threat and Dean could only hope he’d be strong enough if it came to that.

Needing something else to focus on, he said, “I’m someone’s vessel.”

The angel met his statement with stony silence, but he did tilt his head slightly to the right. It was a less menacing reaction.

“It’s the only thing that makes sense. That’s why you didn’t need me until Lucifer got his vessel and why you need me to consent. You need me for a prom dress.”

The angel righted his head and dipped his chin, the movement nearly imperceptible but as good as a nod as he allowed, “You are a vessel.”

“Fantastic. Answer’s still no. Even more no, actually, since that’s apparently a death sentence. It turns out I’m not exactly eager to go back to Hell.”

With that statement, Dean evoked in the angel the first real expression of emotion he’d seen: brows furrowed, lips parted and head craned towards his shoulder, he looked confused. “I told you, Dean, this is an opportunity to redeem yourself. If you do what is asked of you, what is just and good, you will join the righteous in paradise. You can earn your soul a place in Heaven.”

“So,” Dean said slowly, resting an elbow on the table and leaning his cheek into his palm in a careful balance of appearing aloof while not actually putting enough pressure on his jaw to set his injuries aflame, “just to recap, my options are to say yes and have a party in Heaven, or say no and get tortured and left to lie around in my own piss.”

“It is not our intention to make you suffer.” The angel’s earnest tone matched his still puzzled features, and it was almost enough to make Dean believe his sincerity. Only almost, though. He raised his eyebrows challengingly—which, again, was probably a mistake because of the damage there. “Make no mistake, however, we will do what is necessary to see God’s will done.”

“Sorry if I find it hard to believe that God is real enough to care about any of this, much less has a personal interest in my playing puppet to some asshole with a harp and halo.”

That earned Dean the more familiar look of contempt, and the angel stopped talking entirely.

  
Dean lost another staring contest, growing bored after some unquantified length of time, and made a half-hearted demand for a good book or “a girly mag, if you’ve got one lying around. It’s been ages, and a man’s got needs.”

The angel ignored that, as he ignored Dean getting up and pacing around, bargaining for Sammy’s life, yelling in his face, and asking downright blasphemous questions about the workings of Heaven. Eventually, Dean gave up and collapsed back in the chair, strangely exhausted for a man who had only been capable of requiring sleep for a few hours. He slouched against the uncomfortably small metal backrest and decided taking a nap counted as defiance.

He didn’t precisely dream, but flashes of frigid light and the tight grip of ice against skin chased him through unconsciousness, leaving him no less exhausted and unsettled.

When he woke, it took a moment for the circumstances to come flooding back to him. Once they did, his immediate reaction was to jerk his head up and look around for the angel. He stood in the same place with the same impossible blank expression, watching Dean.

Everything else in the room was also completely unchanged, leaving Dean with the familiar disconcerting feeling of having no idea how much time had passed _he spent three thousand years in Hell and it felt like forever, felt like an instant_.

The quiet stare seemed expectant, so Dean started out with, “Answer’s still no,” for good measure. He continued, “Don’t you have anything better to do?”

“This mission is my only priority. Like you, I will not be leaving until it is completed.”

Dean groaned, grinding the heel of his palm against his forehead. “Seriously? I have to deal with you twenty-four seven on top of everything else? I’m actually tempted, that’s going to be awful.”

“Really?”

“No. Fuck off.” He ran his hand down his face and realized—“Am I Wolverine now?”

The angel’s frown scrunched in bafflement again. “You are a human, Dean.”

“Yeah, no shit. I mean, you kinda smashed my face in, dude. Now? Not so smashed. What gives?”

The angel moved then, crossing to Dean’s side of the table and standing over him. Dean had to tilt his neck painfully upwards to keep eye contact, but he refused to look cowed—even if he knew he was, just a bit. He hadn’t had a chance to fight back after that first punch caught him by surprise, but he didn’t think he’d stand much of a chance if the angel decided to warn him before doing it again. There was power barely disguised behind the unassuming human body he’d claimed, not hidden away as thoroughly as the wings he’d allowed Dean to glimpse, but running like a current across his skin and pooling as deadly intent in his eyes.

Dean was brash and plastered bravado over fear as a matter of habit, but he hadn’t survived to adulthood as a hunter by not recognizing dangerous things. Of course, he’d only barely survived to adulthood, because he had a tendency to antagonize things he recognized as dangerous. He saw no reason to change his ways just because he’d stopped surviving, just because he was being threatened with the full force of Heaven making his life worse than Hell.

“Personal space, buddy,” he prompted, tipping his chair to increase the distance between them without looking away. “I don’t what kind of cheesy cop dramas you’ve been watching, but I’m not that kind of girl and this isn’t HBO.”

Ignoring his chatter, the angel stared down at him and said, “You will agree, Dean. It would be better for you to do so quickly.”

Dean shook his head, chuckling condescendingly. “If you want this done quickly, then you’d better scoot off and save my little brother from Hell. That’s the only way this is gonna happen. You’ve already agreed you can’t kill me, and either I have magic healing powers or you do, and used them on me because behind the hard, grumpy exterior, there’s a fluffy little chocolate angel center that doesn’t like being mean.”

Dean laced his fingers behind his head and grinned up at the angel. “I can hold out longer than you can, especially since you don’t really want to hurt me.”

What followed was, to the angel’s credit, the worst beating Dean had ever received in a lifetime of hard fights. It was ceaseless, blow after blow, pain following pain with not a moment of respite or breath or thought. Fists connected with his stomach, chin, ribs _electricity arced through him, burning his lungs and seizing his chest and stopping his heart_ ; fingers pushed into his throat, pushed his face into walls, table, floor; hands lifted and slammed and dropped.

When they were finally still for three rapidfire heartbeats, Dean pushed himself up on shaky arms from where he had collapsed onto the ground, getting his torso high enough that he could lean a shoulder against the table leg to his back. Futilely wiping his mouth with an equally bloody hand, he tilted his face to look at the angel standing over him but misjudged, cracking the back of his skull against the table.

Before he could recover and speak, the angel gripped the front of his shirt and pulled him up, effortless despite the fact that Dean’s legs played no part in supporting his own weight. “Do not mistake the occasional mercy for a lack of conviction,” the angel warned gravely, and then resumed his work.

The second onslaught was just as ceaseless and brutal as the first. What gasping breaths he was able to steal between hits were shallow and bitter with blood, until the angel granted him another respite and propped him in the chair. He slumped bonelessly into it, the backrest pushing painfully against his spine, and fought to recover enough control to hide _too little, too late, always too late_ how deeply he was affected.

The angel, his sleeves spattered with Dean’s blood, moved back to his place near the mirrored glass and reminded him, “You can end this.”

“Can end you,” Dean mumbled. Not a strong retort, by any means, but it was something. As the angel didn’t respond, he counted it as a win and refused to feel pathetic about that.

Nursing his injuries as best he could, Dean used the angel’s prolonged silence to study him again. Other than the dark stains on his clothes, the angel showed no sign of his previous exertions as he stared intently at—or through—Dean. His stoicism bothered Dean more than smugness _they had meant to get caught, it wasn’t some great triumph of police work_ would have, made him feel insignificant despite the importance that had led angels dying to resurrect him.

Dean seethed quietly as he waited to catch his breath, pain slowly fading into a constant throb instead of a steady roar, then said, “Hey, asshole.”

The angel didn’t react, but he was still looking at and paying attention to Dean, so he took another petty victory to soothe the stab in his ribs with every heartbeat and asked, “Who’s my angel?”

Finally, that earned him a frown. “I am Castiel, but I am not yours. Just because I have been tasked with—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dean waved him off the misunderstanding, though he was secretly glad to finally have that answer, and he quickly regretted the movement. “I meant the cowboy who wants me to be his pony.”

“You are the archangel Michael’s vessel,” Castiel said, grave and imploring at once. “He is the leader of the Host and the only one strong enough to defeat Lucifer. He has done it before,” he added earnestly, as though that were the thing holding Dean back from agreement.

“Well, I sure as shit didn’t help him out that time, so he doesn't really seem to need me.” Dean didn’t really like arguing himself back to Hell, but at least he’d be with Sammy again. He couldn't leave his little brother alone in that place.

“Circumstances were different. Lucifer did not have a vessel, so Michael did not need one. Now he does, and it must be you. You will do this.”

“I really won't,” Dean grumbled. “I don't know why you're not getting this. Get Sam out of Hell, I'm your guy. Don't, I'm not. This argument is getting old, so stow your missionary bullshit and get on with whatever Plan B is.”

Plan B, unsurprisingly, involved more pain for Dean. He must have passed out at some point, because he woke back in the chair, rested and whole once more. Castiel repeated the request for Dean's cooperation, but didn't bother with anymore proselytizing before trying to torture a better answer out of him. Dean found himself wishing he hadn't put a stop to that, if only for the moments of relief.

It soon became clear that this was to be their routine. Castiel would offer Dean the honor of serving Heaven as Michael’s vessel, Dean would tell him to shove it, Castiel would break him—physically. Dean would not give in on his own demand. Eventually, Castiel would stop and Dean would lose consciousness, voluntarily or not, and regain it to find his injuries healed to varying degrees, his thirst and hunger sated.

Dean couldn’t judge how long the pattern continued _three four five twelve forty_ or how frequently he’d slept and been reconstructed. He thought he had a fairly accurate count of how many times his ribs had been cracked or broken, though; something about that specific pain recalled a memory _his brother sat beside his hospital bed and his dad didn’t answer the phone, never answered the phone, wouldn’t come to see him die_ too wrenching for him to roll it into a blur with all the other hurts.

Castiel barely spoke except to set forth the ultimatum. When Dean felt particularly daring or ornery, which was admittedly most of the time, he’d hurl insults and demands at the angel: blasphemies, orders to save Sam, complaints about the cold.

Though Castiel never responded, Dean swore an icy wind swept through the room whenever he got particularly obnoxious, leaving behind a chill that started him shivering even through the uselessly underpowered fight response that tried to keep him numb against Castiel’s reprisals.

Castiel never stopped before beating him unconscious those times. He woke healed, but never warmed.

When Dean first realized that immediately upon regaining awareness his fingers were still clenched tight as he huddled into himself for warmth, he determined three things: the punitive drops in temperature didn’t go away; broken bones and and battered flesh hurt more starting cold, not less; and he needed to shut his mouth until he came up with a different strategy, preferably one that wouldn’t leave him an a glacier _bright light filtered down, a promise of freedom he’d never see again_ any time he wasn’t being brutalized.

“Will you serve as Michael's vessel?” Castiel asked as Dean straightened painfully in his chair.

Committed to his new plan of playing nice without actually conceding, still needing to test the boundaries of what would get punished and how, Dean took a deep breath and asked, “If Michael had a vessel—had me—could he get Sam out of Hell?”

The question surprised Castiel, if his cocked head and thoughtful frown were anything to go by. He considered a moment before answering. “Yes.”

Dean sat forward intently. “Would he?”

Castiel took even longer to respond to that, pupils dilating and contracting as his focus shifted. “Yes.”

Slumping back, Dean rubbed his forehead in frustration. “Are all angels shitty liars, or is it just you? No, by the way.”

Castiel’s expression stiffened back to its usual stern glare and Dean barely had time to suck in a lungful of air before the angel was beside him, pulling him up only to throw him against the far wall.

“We will not play games with you, Dean,” he warned as he approached again. “You have demonstrated that you will not do what is right for its own sake, and I have told you that what you ask is not possible. Our only choice is to compel your agreement in any other way we are able.”

For all his gruff threat, however, Castiel contented himself with leaving dark bruises spreading over the majority of Dean’s body that day; nothing snapped or shattered or popped out of place, and Dean dragged himself to the corner to rest under his own power.

Their next few interactions, Dean didn’t speak at all, answering Castiel’s question with just a shake of his head. Castiel responded with his typical forceful attempts at convincing Dean to see the error of his ways, and though the room didn’t warm up, it also didn’t get any colder.

“You know,” Dean pointed out after at least ten such silent rounds, before Castiel could pose his offer, “most people give up when something clearly isn’t working.”

Castiel regarded him coolly. The angel had really perfected his uninterested and unaffected look—or maybe that was default for them. From the lines on his forehead and around his eyes, though, Jimmy Novak had been a man of many smiles.

Dean persevered. “You’ve given it a good try, but I think we can both agree that the violent coercion is getting us nowhere. So how about we hold off on that, step it back a few paces, and talk like reasonable people?

“Negotiating?” he tried when Castiel continued to stare. “You know what I want, I know what you want, we find a happy medium from there.”

“Dean.”

“Castiel.”

“Are you prepared to accept your fate and offer your consent to Michael?”

“See, that’s the part we’ve covered.” Dean bent his head to scratch at the back of his neck in agitation. “So the way the negotiation works is that you offer something less—”

“Yes or no, Dean,” Castiel demanded. The crack of power in his voice suggested Dean should stop stalling. With a shiver for the already chilled temperature, Dean did.

“No,” he said, accepting that his attempt had been entirely useless.

Or, rather, counterproductive: Castiel was particularly vicious that day, and the next, and the next. Dean’s injuries were compounded by the fact that he wasn’t being fully healed between sessions of beatings, which was one of the few methods he had of determining how pissed the angel was at him.

Castiel gave very little away on his own, and kept the same detached affect while administering Dean’s beatings, but his little side punishments were telling: the temperature, the healing, the refusal to engage with Dean’s banter.

In a way, it was even more isolating than the solitude of _endless ice_ Hell to have a person—angel—in such close proximity and still so distant. At the same time, no matter how much Castiel ignored him or hurt him, at least he was a solid presence. Dean could interact with him, feel him in fists and bone-cracking grips.

Dean internally denied ever being grateful for the angel when the period of beatings building upon on beatings culminated in his entire body feeling bruised and broken, everything in his arms and a good portion of his face shattered, jagged bones jutting from one leg, and wrecking gasps shuddering out of him like sobs.

Fist inches from connecting with Dean’s jaw again, Castiel stilled mid-swing; had Dean been in a better frame of mind, he would have appreciated the absolute control the move demonstrated. No human would have been able to pull it off.

Despite the reminder of how terrified he should be of the being controlling his life, he couldn't help but wonder at the sudden show of restraint. His tentative surprise shattered into fragments of shock, wariness, hope as Castiel's free hand came to rest, solid but only as painful as the dislocation made it, on his shoulder.

Where there had been a fist, the angel's fingers closed instead around a large drinking glass manifested from nothingness. The water inside was perfectly still, but condensation glistened and fell in rivulets over Castiel's fingers where he gripped it.

He held it to Dean's mouth, commanded, “Drink,” when Dean could go nothing but stare in confusion.

Previously—millennia ago—Dean would have appreciated the cool refreshment of the water Castiel tipped past his lips. Though he swallowed the small mouthfuls, equal parts grateful and afraid, he couldn’t suppress the shivers building ever stronger as the thin trickle pulled out what little heat remained in his core until his chest felt full of ice.

By the time he finished, his joints ground painfully with the chill, more remembered than current but still achingly real. He flicked his eyes up to Castiel’s face, caught the unchanged hard stare, and dropped his gaze back down to the empty glass.

Thus began a new pattern for their interactions. Castiel would still demand Dean's consent, Dean would still refuse, and Castiel would still punish him. But after, when Dean shook with the pain and adrenaline, wished to be anywhere _nothing but the cold and ice and pale light_ but that small room, clung stubbornly to the one last thing he could do to protect his brother—then Castiel would offer some small comfort, some tiny gesture of kindness that radiated through Dean like the sun he hadn’t seen in millennia.

Sometimes it was a drink or a bit of food—Dean was man enough to admit that he teared up the first time a bacon cheeseburger appeared on the table in front of him. A few times he got a blanket to wrap himself in, or a mattress that would always be gone again when he woke.

Once, Castiel reached out and lightly touched his face, warm, dry fingers spreading heat and relief through Dean as he realized the angel was healing the shattered bones of his cheek and eye socket. Dean’s eyes fluttered closed against his better judgement as he soaked in the contact, the first time Castiel had touched his skin and not brought pain.

The fingers slipped down, tracing along his face with a firm pressure that grounded him, before pushing up at his chin. Taking the direction, Dean looked up and met Castiel's gaze, and found the vibrant blue eyes less haughty than he remembered. Voice quiet and achingly gentle, Castiel asked him one more time, “Will you help us, Dean? I don’t wish to have to do this again.”

Dean came so close to giving in, he felt the resignation of it ease away all his tension. He took a deep breath, lighter than he’d been since he sold his soul, since his father died, since his brother left, since his mother died. He couldn’t bring himself to fight Castiel anymore. He’d been alone and cold for so _so so so_ long and now the angel was here, with him, and his touch was the only thing holding back the ache of frost in the air. Memories of heat flared out from the brush of his fingertips, and Dean found himself longing to press his cheek into the angel’s palm and bask in the warmth of his skin.

Realizing that was enough to snap Dean out of his trance and send him jerking away from Castiel. “Save Sam or go fuck yourself,” he croaked. The hoarseness of his voice must have been from the way Castiel’s hand had wrapped around his throat and tightened, crushing until the slightest breath had rattled and burned on the way in; it had nothing to do with the icy chasm that opened in his chest at the loss of Castiel’s caress.

Castiel’s hand fell away from the empty space where Dean had been, and though his tone was as gruff as ever when he said, “Very well,” Dean thought he saw a hint of sadness before the angel’s blue eyes turned from him. He put it out of his mind, tucking it away with the _his father held his brother, so small and frail, and scowled at his failure_ inexplicable kick he felt in his gut at disappointing Castiel again.

He slept in the chair after a long period of silence, and woke to a bowl of tepid oatmeal followed by a question from Castiel. Later, curled protectively around his broken ribs beneath the softest blanket he’d ever known, he thought that Castiel’s heart hadn’t really been in the violence. It had been no less brutal, physically, but the angel’s face held that same trace of sadness, softening lines that had only ever been hard with determined anger before. He let himself remember the dry glide of skin across his cheek, the gentle push of fingers below his chin, and be comforted by it.

Unexpectedly, though not inexplicably, there were consequences to Dean getting more comfortable, feeling more alive and human again. He began to enjoy the food Castiel brought him, to the point of craving a burger or something sweet when he’d only been refreshed in his sleep for days. He initiated conversations, meaningless though they were, with Castiel in the downtime between their conflicts, and was pleased that the angel responded—mostly scowls and one-word answers, but occasionally an actual discussion passed between them.

Dean reveled in the feeling of connecting to someone, anyone else after so much time alone. When he slept, dozing on the chair or unconscious on the floor, he woke feeling rested and what snatches he remembered of his dreams were pleasantly vague and untormented.

The first morning, or what passed for it in their windowless room _his baby brother hated leaving motels before it was light, but loved watching the sunrise_ , that he roused in his seat with his cock heavy with desire, it took so long to recall the purpose and satisfaction of it that the sore bruises and stinging scrapes left from the day before had wilted it to nothingness before he could ponder its source or resolution.

Castiel, standing ever at watch from across the table, made no indication that he had noticed—or, more likely, he simply hadn’t cared. Their session proceeded as was their routine: Castiel’s demands, Dean’s refusals, eight broken ribs and a dislocated shoulder. Castiel offered him a thick, soft mattress in the corner after they were done, but forced him to sleep rather than healing the injuries so painfully keeping him awake.

It was some unmeasured time later—more than a few cycles of wake-hurt-sleep, not close to as long as he’d spent in the ice—that it happened again. Dean dreamt of a woman with tan skin and brown hair and smooth curves.

She pinched the large, perky nipple of her own full breast while her twin licked and sucked at the other, and fucked herself on her twin’s fingers. She moaned high and breathy with every rock of her hips, throwing back her head and reaching down to rub desperate circles over her clit as she got close.

Dean woke when she began to spasm and wail, his hips thrusting subconsciously against the hand that had found its way between his thighs.

He remembered his surroundings and froze. Castiel had given him both mattress and pillow, but no blanket, so he was stretched out on his back with only the table shielding him from the angel’s eternal stare. Except even that wasn't hiding him, because the angel had come around to stand by the corner of the bed near his head and was contemplating Dean’s crotch much more intently than Dean was comfortable with. He pulled his hand away like it burned and rolled to the side, putting Castiel behind him.

“Dean.” The low voice was halfway between a question and a command, curious without condemning, and Dean didn’t know what to do with that.

“Nothing, it’s just, it’s a thing. Can you gimme a minute without the creepy staring? I'm not gonna, you know”—he could not, would not say ‘jerk it’ to an angel—“or anything, I just…”

Castiel didn't move away, but his feet did scuff softly on the floor as he shifted. “You may,” he told Dean in a quiet, solemn tone. “It's been ages, and a man's got needs.”

If it hadn't been for the incongruity of the phrase coming from the angel's mouth, Dean might not have recognized his own words from their very first day together. Distracted from his aroused discomfort to find humor in the situation, he chuckled and rolled himself back up into a seated position—though he still kept his knees bent to preserve what dignity he could pretend he still had.

“What do you know about a man’s needs?” he challenged, though he did it with a grin. “I’ve seen Dogma, I know you’ve got a whole lotta nothing going on down there, Ken doll.” He waved his hand in the general latitude of Castiel’s crotch, though he made sure to keep as far back from it as was possible.

The angel looked down at him in squinting confusion. “If you’re referring to sexual organs, Jimmy Novak was genitally intact. Though I do not have personal experience with arousal, I have seen his memories and observed humans since the dawn of time. I am not unfamiliar with the results of sexual desire.”

“Right, of course,” Dean agreed with an eyeroll and a grimace. “Gotta make sure no one’s having any fun with their sex. If it’s not straight missionary to make babies, it’s a sin.”

Dean was aggravated enough at the topic—he had enjoyed his sex life, and angels who let his family die but sat around in judgement of a bit of harmless fun between consenting adults could fuck right off—to have lost the erection that started the conversation. He struggled to his feet and scowled, but Castiel shook his head, looking as bemused as the stoic angel had ever managed.

“The obsessive focus on how and with whom you use your genitals is a purely human invention. Masturbation, sodomy, recreational fornication—Heaven doesn’t care.”

Having his righteous indignation suddenly shattered from under him left Dean off-balance. “Oh.”

“Indeed.” Castiel looked Dean up and down, assessing anything the state of his pants or the injuries he’d had before sleeping and didn’t have after waking up or something else entirely that Dean couldn’t begin to guess at. Losing what little softness had opened his expression, Castiel focused his sharp eyes back on Dean’s. “Are you prepared to set aside your own selfish desires for the sake of the world?”

That hurt, both the accusation and the abrupt shift from what had been a mostly congenial conversation to the prelude for Dean’s daily torture session. “You know there’s more to it than that,” he argued, but he couldn’t stop the faint trace of sadness that crept into what he had intended as quiet anger. “I’m all for saving the world, but not at the cost of my brother.”

“And yet, my brothers’ lives are a price you’d willingly pay.” Castiel’s voice carried within it all the rumbling thunder of his very first proclamation to Dean, and it raised Dean’s hackles unforgivably.

“News flash, asshole: you’re freaking angels. You signed up for this whole good versus evil shit that Sammy and me got dumped on us as kids. And from what you’ve said, your pals are dying anyway, so they might as well get ganked for a good cause.”

Later, with every bone in both of his hands broken and the joint of his left elbow snapped the wrong direction, he tried to pass out on the floor but found there was no position that didn’t leave his limbs in agony too great to let him rest, but too little to strong-arm him out of consciousness. He managed, under Castiel’s impassive gaze, to push himself over to the corner and prop his less injured shoulder and head along one wall, his back on the other, and, shivering, gave in to the tender blackness.

His hands were functional but painful when he woke, the chill air sinking into him and aching in all of his partially healed fractures. Castiel waited only long enough to give Dean the chance to decline vesselhood again before laying into him. The angel was focused, angry, and silent as he broke Dean’s nose, knocked out his teeth, dislocated and shattered his jaw. Dean tried to hold back, because even reflexive grunts of pain resonated the injuries in his face with knife-sharp ferocity, but he groaned uncontrollably when Castiel threw him to the ground.

He lay, gagging on warm fluid when he attempted to breathe, and thought it would serve Castiel right for him to drown in his own blood and wind up back in Hell.

A shadow fell over him and he looked up to see Castiel kneeling beside him with an expression that Dean would have called regretful on any other face.

“You are infuriating,” the angel informed him. His low, rumbling voice close in Dean's ear sounded more confused than angry, despite the rage he had taken out on Dean's body just moments before.

He reached out with two fingers extended, then hesitated once more. Dean recognized the gesture from when Castiel had healed him, and even as he convulsed from aspirating, blood gasping down his throat and into his lungs, a spark lit in his chest at the memory of the gentle, warming touch. When his vision began to grey out, Castiel’s hand moved toward him again; he was unconscious before he could feel them brush his skin.

If there were dreams, he didn’t remember them.

When Castiel greeted him—”Hello, Dean,”—upon waking, the angel was abnormally subdued; it was an echo of his stoic norm, but there was a quietly uncertain characteristic to it that Dean didn’t know how to interpret. He watched Dean from the other side of the room as the seconds in which he should have asked for Dean’s agreement came and went. “Dean,” he repeated instead, then nothing.

Dean should have been grateful for the angel’s apparent hesitance. If Castiel didn’t ask him to be Michael’s vessel, Dean wouldn’t have to refuse and Castiel wouldn’t punish him for his refusal. They could coexist in this state of truce; not forever, Dean knew it couldn’t last, but it would be a welcome respite from the torture which kept zigzagging between brutal and mind-shattering.

Instead, he found himself uneasy with Castel’s unease. Something had changed between them, but he wasn’t sure yet if it was for better or worse, and that made him nervous. To postpone the possibility of the latter, he headed off any discussion of it by prompting, “Got something to ask, Castiel?”

The look of mixed confusion and relief on Castiel’s face, gone in an instant, was enough to reassure the anxiety freezing his ribs that he had done the right thing. Though it ended with Dean sore and bleeding, he was in better shape than he’d been the last round and he felt a pained satisfaction at the having handled the situation. He slept on the mattress and woke feeling more rested than he could remember since coming back to life in their little room. 

Their program settled again, a steady pattern of predictable offers and denials and reprisals, but Dean noticed that Castiel’s uses of force were noticeably less forceful than they’d been. Dean resumed his idle chatter and though Castiel didn’t engage in conversation, he thought he caught the angel pointedly refusing to smile a few times.

After a few days of calmer interaction, he drifted off in the chair with bruises stretching an ache across his ribs when he breathed and his dreams full of a woman with Asian features and long, dark hair fucking herself with a ribbed, dark blue glass dildo.

He was almost painfully hard when he woke, erection straining against the zipper of his jeans and the awkward slouch of his hips in his seat. He glanced down, then flicked his eyes up to find the angel at the near corner of the table.

Dean licked his lips, mouth suddenly dry, and couldn’t shake off the haze of desire that still clung to him from the realistically pornographic dream. “Can I... have a minute?” he dared to ask.

“Yes.” Castiel’s eyes were dark and intent, his face partly shaded from the dreary light. He made no effort to move from his vantage point.

“Do I get some privacy?” Dean asked, reaching to ease down his fly with a trembling hand.

“No.”

“Shit,” he swore even as he pulled himself out and pushed his clothes out of the way. He closed his eyes and turned his head and tried to forget that there was an angel about to watch him jack off because he needed it too badly.

It started out awkwardly. Dean was desperate but also desperately aware of Castiel's presence. He stroked himself slowly, rubbing a palm over the head of his dick on the upstroke and pausing fractionally every time he remembered the angel looming at his side.

His self-consciousness fell away as vaguely pleasant friction turned into warm waves of ecstasy pulsing through his core. He began to work himself faster, slick now with precome as his fist pumped up and down his shaft. Feeling the bright spark of climax approaching, he tensed, hips lifting off the chair, thighs and ass clenching, and—

“Dean.”

His eyes flew open and he locked onto blue, blue _oceans and evening skies and a nameless woman's sapphire necklace bouncing as he fucked her_ , blue in the moment that he came, moaning and shaking. He held the gaze even as he shuddered through his first orgasm in three thousand years, helplessly captive to his own rush of euphoria and the look of curious wonder on Castiel's face.

They stared at each other through Dean's panting breaths, a warmth building in Dean’s chest as he saw Castiel’s mouth parted in a mirror of his own gasps. As his heart slowed and he came down from the onslaught of lust and release, he was left with a tender glow suffusing his chest at the sight of the vulnerably awestruck angel.

“Cas,” he whispered, unable to form the rest of his name. Castiel—Cas—accepted it, stepping forward and reaching towards Dean but stopping short. His hand hovered just shy of Dean’s face as a complex play of emotions danced over his expressive face—so underutilized when they’d first met, but slowly melting into a personality that Dean could read and, inexplicably enough, feel an exasperated fondness for.

Cas pulled away, shutting his flustered confusion beneath stoicism once more, and took up his post across the table. It felt like all the warmth of the room left with him, leaving Dean to shiver with his softening dick still exposed. His back to the mirror, Cas kept his guarded gaze on Dean without speaking again for hours.

It took less time than that for Dean to flush with embarrassment, wiping his hand on his jeans before shuffling them awkwardly back up his ass and darting his eyes to the one-way mirror. He had always written it off as mood setting, but he briefly wondered if there really was someone—some angel, even Michael—watching on the other side. He wanted to ask Cas, but he didn’t want to break the tense silence that stretched across the room.

Eventually, reminiscent of their first night, Dean settled in the chair to sleep without another word passing between them; Cas never even made his standard demand. Dean’s dreams were vaguely troubled but unmemorable, and he woke to cleaned clothes and a steadier, though gentler, Cas.

“Will you serve as Michael’s vessel?” he asked gravely.

Dean shook his head, mute with conflicted feelings. He was partly glad to be back to routine, as unfavorable as it was for his health, because it was familiar and he knew what was expected of him. At the same time, beating off was much more enjoyable than getting beaten, and the tentative bond he had felt forming towards Cas seemed, finally, to start being reciprocated as best the angel could manage. He was beginning to believe that Cas cared about his wellbeing, torture notwithstanding, and it left him unsure how to interpret the continued pressure to accept his death via archangel.

Even as Cas administered his punishment, Dean’s mind was preoccupied with juggling the fact of his brother’s imprisonment in Hell, the unexpected gentleness of Cas’s blows, the distant threat of the end of the world, and his own complex formula for balancing them all. He continued to think about it as he settled in the corner with his temporary blanket, eyes on the angel whose eyes never stopped watching him.

The problem churned through his thoughts as he and Cas found their way back to their version of normal, with a few adjustments. Dean had something soft—mattress, blanket, or pillow—to sleep on more often than not, and he did sleep; he hadn’t been hurt to unconsciousness since he had belittled the other angels’ lives. He also started having dreams of a particularly memorable nature, nearly every time he closed his eyes.

He'd look down to long blond hair slipping through his fingers and slick warmth bobbing up and down his cock, then up to Cas a few feet away, watching intently.

Or he'd have a woman bent backwards over the table, moaning around a mouthful of her tits as he thrust into the tight, dripping heat of her. He’d glance up to watch in the mirror, a perfect reflection of him fucking her even in the dim light, then his gaze would fix on the image of the angel standing just behind him, staring back at him.

Each time, as soon as his eyes met Cas’s, he’d be hit with a convulsively powerful orgasm and wake, still shaking with the rush of it, to a warm patch in his boxers and an angel watching over him. It stopped being awkward and fell into routine, sticky mess cooling around his junk as Cas beat him included, surprisingly quickly. Dean almost didn't mind the torture, which continued not escalating past deep bruises and infrequent fractures.

Leaning back in the chair, his jeans undone and pushed down his thighs with his boxers, Dean registered that he was dreaming as the buxom woman straddled his lap and sunk herself onto him. His hips hitched instinctively as she rode him, hands settling on her waist, but instead of losing himself in the sensation, he looked past her. Though he refused to admit to himself what it was he was doing, he still had a flash of panic when he couldn’t see Cas over her shoulder.

Cas was quiet when Dean woke with a jolt; still in his place by the mirrored window, his face directed at Dean’s location, but he seemed to be looking through him, unaware of his renewed consciousness.

The angel appeared vacant in a way that recalled his attentive silence their first day together, receiving orders from on high, and Dean felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature.

“Cas?”

Cas blinked once, slowly, and focused on Dean. Rather ask than his standard question, he strode around the table and pulled Dean up roughly by his jacket.

Trying for lighthearted but sounding panicked, Dean asked, “So we’re just skipping ahead to the—” and was cut off by lips shoving against his. It was momentarily awkward, with Cas’s pursed mouth stuck partly inside Dean’s as it opened on the vowel, but then Cas brushed the backs of his fingers, radiant with life, against Dean’s cheek on the way to cradling his head and Dean melted into the kiss.

Dean’s arms rose of their own volition, hands gripping tight into Cas’s back as he chased Cas’s heat, losing himself in the shock and passion of the moment. Cas’s hands were warm on his skin, his mouth a furnace stoking embers into Dean’s lungs, and without entirely understanding how they’d reached this point, Dean felt finally, luxuriously right in the embrace.

Pulling away despite Dean’s choked-off whimper of a protest, Cas pulled gently at his hair to tilt his head away and burn a line of open-mouthed kisses over his jaw and down his neck. He stopped when he reached the collar of Dean’s heavy jacket, pressing his nose to the juncture of neck and shoulder and held there.

Dean hadn’t given much thought to whether angels needed to breathe, but if the hot puffs of air brushing along his collarbone were any indication, the ones in vessels were at least capable of it. He ran his hands over the rough fabric of Cas’s coat, savoring the faint body heat but needing so much more. “Can I—?” he asked brokenly, trying to slide a hand under the layers and layers of cloth keeping him away from Cas’s incandescent skin.

With a soft rustle and no movement from the angel, they were both fully naked, flesh pressed to hot flesh, and Dean clung to Cas as his blood warmed and his heart sped up to push it through arteries that he was sure would never feel _his breath clouded in front of his face, lights flickered, his brother tried to kill him_ tight and cold again.

He didn’t remember getting hard, but he wasn’t surprised to find that he was—nor to feel another erection burning a hard line against his thigh in return. Though completely unfamiliar, the sensation was pleasantly reassuring: it was physical connection, proof of Cas’s care; so, so warm and yielding against skin accustomed to cold, stiff denim. Almost in disbelief, he let go of a sharply angled shoulder blade and reached down to grasp Cas’s length. The flesh was soft and velvety against his fingertips but flushed hot and heavy with blood.

Cas’s hand dropped as well, releasing his shoulder and running around Dean’s back to cup a tender palm around the swell of his ass. Fingers brushed down his cleft and he shivered, though it had nothing to do with the chill he no longer felt circulating through the air. When the tips of the fingers dipped further, suddenly gliding smoothly with something that felt like warming oil, leaving a trail of heat along his skin.

Turning them together, Cas released him just long enough to fit both hands around Dean’s waist and lift him effortlessly onto the table, then his slick fingers returned to press between Dean’s legs. The feel of it was strange, a stretch and pressure he wouldn’t have otherwise classified as pleasurable, but feeling Cas heating him from within engulfed every other reaction. Cas brushed over something inside him and pulled his fingers free while Dean was still reeling from the flash it set off.

Moaning a prayerful curse, Dean let his head fall back to hit the table and was too caught up in the cradle of Cas’s warm body to care about the minor pain of it. His eyes rolled back as the angel sunk into him, slow and gentle and searing hot, and he caught a glimpse of their reflection: Dean folded backwards over the table with Cas bent above him, kissing bursts of sunlight into his chest.

It was remarkably similar to one of his recurring dreams, and yet vastly different all the same. The sex was tender, not rough. The pair of them were upside-down in his view, Dean penetrated instead of penetrating, and though it was not a position he’d have imagined for himself until it happened, he felt more alive than he could remember being in _before the ice, before the hounds, before his brother died and his father died and his mother died_ his entire life.

Every careful rock of Cas’s hips sent a spark dancing within Dean’s core, building to a dizzying fever when the angel reached between them to fondle and stroke at him. Dean grabbed at the back of Cas’s head, pulling him down to press their foreheads together as he groaned out his overwhelmed feelings. Burning with Cas’s heat inside and over him, the friction of his thrusts and the protective enclosure of his body, Dean gripped tighter, ground his head against Cas’s as though he could push himself into the angel’s body that way, or pull the angel further into his.

Cas’s hand sped up over him, thrusting deep and steady, and Dean’s pleasure spiked into a writhing, breathless orgasm. His back arched and his fingers clenched, “Cas!” punching out of already vacant lungs as he felt his ass contracting around Cas’s thick, hot dick inside him.

In moments, he felt the warm rush of Cas’s come filling him, branding him as the angel shuddered into him, face a blurry picture of wide-eyed wonder a breath away from Dean’s own. With a wordless gasp, Cas collapsed onto the table, barely holding himself up above Dean’s chest.

They lay for long moments, Dean’s sweat cooling without chilling him as Cas shielded him from the cold. “Please, Dean,” Cas whispered softly against his neck. His body still draped over Dean’s, blanketing him in the comfort and warmth of bare, flushed skin.

Dean’s mind raced along with his pulse, filled with euphoria and dissonance and need and guilt and love. Every heartbeat flooded his veins with fire—desire to please Cas, bliss at the grounding pressure of his touch, yearning to stay with him forever—but each breath quenched him in ice water just as rapidly. He couldn’t fail Sam again. He couldn’t give in, no matter how much he wanted to, how wrong he was to refuse.

Before he could gather himself enough to answer either way, Cas pushed up, just enough to be able to meet Dean’s gaze, but Dean couldn’t hold back a whimper at the loss of the solid chest pressed to his. Cas held himself up on one arm as the other hand cradled Dean’s cheek, thumb stroking a soothing rhythm.

“We have very little time left. If the others were to find out that I can’t bear to hurt you, they would send me away.”

Dean’s hands flew up to clutch at Cas’s arms desperately. The angel’s soft expression showed no sign of pain at a grip that would have been bruising for a man. He felt so real, soft flesh over hard muscle under Dean’s fingers, but all at once Dean was panicked at the thought of him flying away, vanishing into an intangible memory like _Mom, Dad, Sammy_ everyone else he’d ever had, loved, lost.

“Don’t,” he begged. “Cas, you can’t leave me.”

“I don’t wish to,” Cas promised. His arms tensed and shifted beneath Dean’s touch as he kept up his reassuring caress. “They would not give me a choice. They would take me from you.”

His voice dropped along with his face, lips so close to Dean’s he could breathe in Cas’s warm air as the angel added, “They would take you from me.”

“I won’t let them!” Dean said desperately. “I’ll never agree, I’ll demand you back, I—”

Cas interrupted gently, sadly, “Dean.” He said the name as if it broke his heart. “I’ve been trying to tell you all along, but you never listen. You have no power to bargain here. They will not give you anything, or anyone. Have you not learned that by now?”

The truth of it washed over him, threatening to drown the denial he’d used as a raft for so long. But instead of floundering in an icy tide, he found himself sinking into a steaming bath that melted his worry away.

He didn’t have a choice, he knew that now—at least, not the one he thought he wanted. He’d never had that choice. His choice was: trust Cas, believe in Cas, keep Cas; or don’t.

From the very beginning, Cas had only wanted what was best for Dean, his redemption and salvation, and Dean's failure to understand that had caused them both so much pain.

Tremulously, he asked, “Will you stay? When I say yes, will they let you stay?”

“Yes, Dean.” Cas leaned into him, skin branding skin everywhere they touched, and kissed him long and sweet. “You will have earned your paradise and the gratitude of Heaven. Anything you want, anything the Host has the power to give, will be yours.”

He closed his eyes and kissed Cas one more time. Cas’s tongue was hot against his, igniting a fire deep in his chest that raced through his veins until he burned from within. He wanted to keep that heat forever. He could.

“Yes,” he whispered to his angel’s lips.

All at once a sound broke over them, the rustling flutter of wings and wind, and Dean’s stomach dropped away as his vision whited out. It was an excruciatingly unpleasant feeling, made worse by the bite of frost rushing around him and the sudden lack of Cas’s flesh hot against his.

When his senses cleared, Dean found himself and the angel standing outside in the bitter cold. Though they were again fully dressed, the strong gusts of biting wind cut through Dean’s jacket and jeans to force violent shivers out of him within moments. Cas, of course, seemed unaffected.

Dean crossed his arms and rubbed at them defensively to try and ward off the chill as he looked around. They stood in a scorched field filled with broken tumbles of stones; a few, more intact, looked like grave markers. The blackened grass and cracked dirt crunched underfoot as he turned, taking in the vast horizon broken only by a few skeletal trees.

The sky was immense, wide and open, and it unnerved him after so long confined. Adding to his unease, it wasn’t the sky he remembered: rust-brown smog roiled in thick chains like the Earth had angered it, blocking out the radiant sun and welcoming blue firmament Dean had longed for through his ages in the ice.

He looked back to find Cas watching him, and with the angel’s sky blue eyes he found his voice. “What happened? Where are we?”

“This is where the final conflict will take place. Michael will claim you as his vessel and defeat Lucifer.”

“So, we’re in Heaven?”

“No, Dean.” Cas glanced at the destruction surrounding them and his face pulled together into the sad version of his frown. “This is what’s left of Earth. It is... inhospitable. What little life remains, struggles against significant odds. Most of the planet’s water has been poisoned, and no rain has fallen that did not burn since Lucifer took his vessel.”

The low-key guilt that had been gnawing at Dean since his revelation sunk its teeth in deeper. It was his fault things had been allowed to get so bad, but he could fix it. Cas had promised he would redeem himself.

Still, he felt compelled to tell Cas, “I’m sorry.”

“It will all be okay,” Cas promised in return. Stepping close, he laid a hand on Dean’s arm and Dean felt the warm glow of him even through his layers.

A loud crack came from their left, and Cas’s grip tightened even as a barely familiar voice said, “Dean. This is a surprise.”

Dean had to look; once he did, he had to remind himself that it wasn’t really his brother anymore.

In some ways, it was easy to distinguish them. The man before him was too old—much older than Dean had been when he died, almost as old as his father had been—and the years had taken a heavy toll. His face was lined and scarred, even at a distance, and he left sleeve of his crisp white suit hung limp where his hand should have extended.

But underneath it all, he recognized Sammy. His baby brother, whom he’d raised, loved, protected, and sacrificed nearly everything for, in the end. Sam had been his whole world, until—

He pushed back into Cas’s hold, needing to feel grounded and safe. “Where’s Michael?”

“He’ll be here soon, Dean. He’s readying the Host for battle. No harm will come to you.”

Sam—Lucifer—smirked, twisting his face into a cruelty Dean had never seen on those features before, and lifted his hand. Dean flinched away despite Cas’s reassuringly solid presence, and the devil’s smug grin widened. “There might be some harm,” he disagreed in harsh, broken version of Sammy’s voice.

Before anything could come of the menace, a bright light flared up between Dean and his brother’s possessed body. Cas let go and stepped away as it danced and pulsed in front of him; even as Dean mourned the loss of the touch, he felt warmth expanding from what he knew must be the archangel Michael.

More firmly than he’d done before, he said, “Yes.”

An ethereal chorus whispered strange and foreign phrases from within the swirling light that buoyed Dean’s spirit despite not being able to understand them. He felt a peaceful warmth spread gently over his skin and sink in, steeping down through his flesh until everything was a comfortable haze. The heat built within him, rising from pleasant to fevered in moments, and panic flared up with it.

He was ablaze, burning from the inside out, and nothing in his violent and painful past had prepared him for the agony of being cremated alive, his organs searing into char within him as his blood boiled, pressure and fire exploding in his chest and ripping away the last of his mind until all he knew was the inferno and the sound of his own screams.

Finally, an eternity of flames later, he was consumed. He felt his soul fall to ash and in that moment of blackness, the blistering torture ended. Dean’s mind was his own, not even reeling from the suffering he had endured; it had happened, he could remember the events, but he saw them as though from a vast, impersonal distance, then let them drift away to consider his surroundings.

Dean’s first impression was of warm air cradling him, driven by some ineffable breeze to caress his cheeks and kiss his lashes. He kept his eyes closed, basking in the perfect tenderness. Though he considered drawing in a deep, relaxing breath, he found it unnecessary as he listened to the stillness of his heart. Unlike the first time he had become aware of the inaction of his vital functions, trapped beneath and within the unforgiving ice after hellhounds had torn through his viscera, he met this realization not with panic or sadness, but with a joyful sense of belonging.

He suspected what he would find were he to look. The familiarly uncomfortable hardness of a metal chair left nearly bruising impressions as it supported his weight on contours never matched to an actual human backside. Slightly stiff canvas wrapped him in a heavy embrace, tight over his shoulders and loose over his arms. He hoped, just short of praying, to be right about his surroundings—and yet, what mattered most was the presence he thought he felt filling the atmosphere with electricity.

Fear hit him all at once, chilling him to the core and keeping him blind; if it were just a memory or a delusion, he knew it would shatter him as nothing else had managed. He had suffered, yes, and cracked, but he could not bear to lose the last thing to keep him whole. He shivered and waited, unable to take that risk.

“Dean.” The voice was soft and close, but no less grave than it had been the first time it spoke his name, and with it returned all the sunny balm of the air. Opening his eyes on a smile he couldn’t even attempt to contain, Dean looked up into Cas’s eyes, framed by his intense and weathered face, and marveled that he had ever missed the devotion shining through every detail of the angel’s expression.

Without knowing what he was asking for, he surrendered himself to Cas’s gaze and begged, “Please.”

He didn’t need to know what he needed, because Cas did; Cas always would. Stepping forward, the angel tipped Dean’s jaw in gentle hands, bent over to encompass him, and pressed their lips together in a heated kiss.


End file.
